From Wayne Goulet of Randolph Technical Career Center (Vermont):

I'm teaching the NGPF Semester curriculum as a Vermont Technical College (VTC) dual enrollment course in my classroom. We recently completed the Savings Unit. While teaching the unit, I was surprised to learn that many of my students do not have a savings accounts. However, on the day we completed the unit, one student decided he was going to visit a local bank to sign up for a savings account in order to deposit his paycheck from his part-time job. This student was still not 100% sure what type of savings account to sign up for. As such, he wanted my advice on how to ask the bank "to sign me up for one of those compound interest types of accounts." After ensuring him the bank would sign him up for a compound interest account if he asked for one, I was beaming inside knowing that my financial literacy instructional efforts had made a direct and immediate impact.

From a former student of Julius Prezelski of Mt. St. Joseph's (Maryland):

One was that you said, a piece of paper (a degree) is the same piece of paper whether you get the piece of paper from a $40,000 a year school versus a $10,000 a year school. I really wanted to go to Loyola at about $30,000 a year, but UMBC was only around $10,000 a year for tuition. I chose UMBC and graduated without any college debt (thanks in a huge way to my parents), but it wouldn't have been possible with the Loyola tuition. I ended up getting a great education in the process from a school that still has a good reputation.

Also, I remember when you talked about your daughters wanting a dog. You let them know that a dog is expensive, and it's almost like having another child. It costs money for food, for toys, to take care of them if they get sick. I extrapolated from that that we always need to explore the financial and the practical demands of the decisions we want to undertake.

Finally, as I have talked to you about, it really pays if you have self-control to be able to understand how to take what credit card companies are giving you. Aha! This goes back to the idea of good credit, which I'm sure we discussed in your class. Starting at 18, I had a job and one credit card. So I started building up credit, even if I wasn't spending so much. That led me to learning about the many deals that companies are offering if you want to apply for their credit card. It's obviously not advisable to apply for many cards at one time, but as I got older I realized that many of the rewards companies were giving ($200 cash back for signing up and spending $1000 within the first three months) could be achieved by simply paying the bills that one normally incurs such as car insurance, gas, a car payment, etc. However, it's harder to get those good deals if you don't start building credit as soon as you can and making sure you pay that card off in full. 

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